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“I’ll take this to work with me.” I attempt to scoot my chair back. Edward rests his hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“Just a second.” He sets a stack of dusty, old-looking photo albums on the table. I gasp.
“Are these my family’s albums?” I ask.
“They are,” he says. “Chastity had the maid look for them.”
I meet Chastity’s look of annoyance with a grateful smile. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re very welcome, Miss Greyson,” she says. “They really were such a bother to locate. The poor maid with her asthma, coughing and sputtering all over the attic like a dying car engine.” I wouldn’t put it past her to have intentionally sought out an asthmatic maid for the job.
I make room for the albums in front of me and begin paging through, in order, from top to bottom. The earliest photos seem to date back to the twenties.
“Seen any familiar faces around the estate?” Edward asks. “Chastity’s convinced the house is haunted. At least, that’s her reasoning for why she’s always knocking over her wineglasses.”
He winks at Chastity, who purses her lips. I scan the faces for Will, and end up recognizing a few others, like the couple I saw outside the conservatory the first night I stayed here.
I figure there’s no point in covering up my abilities anymore, since Edward is already convinced of their existence.
“I’ve seen them.” I point out the couple from the first night, plus a few more from the party.
“Astonishing.” Edward grins. “I knew you had the Greyson gift.”
“Yes, how exciting,” Chastity says. “Our very own psychic medium. Maybe you can read my palm sometime.”
“I could try.” Palm lines have their own objective meanings, but my mom was especially good at interpreting them. She’d sometimes get visions in the middle of a palm or tarot reading, though she refused to charge money for reconnecting people with dead loved ones. It felt exploitative.
In the next album, I find a photo taken in the dining room of a group of teenagers. At the center, in front of a large cake, stands a younger version of the woman I saw on the stairs. She’s wearing a halter-style dress held up by a wide dark ribbon. Her hair is tied in twin braids. I tease the photo out of its sleeve and turn it over. Written on the back in perfect penmanship are the words,Katherine Elenore Greyson, age 19, Happy Birthday.
“She looks a lot like you,” Edward says from over my shoulder.
“She’s my grandmother. This photo was taken just three years before she died.”
One of my grandpa’s biggest regrets was leaving the estate without insisting on taking a few photo albums. According to him, Edward had demanded they leave the property immediately, giving Grandpa and my mom barely enough time to pack two small suitcases and be gone. When my grandpa called a few days later to inquire about the albums, Edward reminded him that he’d sold the estate with all of its contents, including photographs.
In a way, Edward showing me these albums now feels like he’s trying to make amends for holding my family’s history hostage. Unfortunately for my mom and grandpa, it’s too little too late.
The first photo inside the last album is my mother’s high school portrait. I trace the outline of her smiling face with my fingertip.
“She’s so pretty,” I say.
“Isabella was very beautiful,” says Edward.
I don’t even have to look at Chastity to know she’s scowling, and I can’t rightly blame her. What the hell is Edward thinking, saying something like that in front of his wife? I turn the page and find a bunch of photos taken at a Halloween party. My mother is dressed as Dorothy fromThe Wizard of Oz, complete with ruby-red heels and a fluffy toy dog in a basket.
“I remember that party,” Edward says. “Isabella spent days decorating the stables. She invited all her girlfriends to the guesthouse for a sleepover.”
“What guesthouse?” I wasn’t aware there was one on the property.
“It’s on the east side of the vineyard,” Edward says, “tucked back into the trees. Chastity uses it as an office now, but your mother and grandfather lived there for a short while, after we bought the estate.”
I wonder why Will never bothered to take me there all those nights we spent searching for my mother.
Edward turns the page for me and smiles at another photo of my mother in her Dorothy costume. “She looked especially lovely that night—”
“Oops!” Chastity’s hand shoots out, knocking over the smoothie, and splattering purple liquid all over the photo album.
“So sorry about that,” she says, clutching her necklace in a way that makes it crystal clear she’s not sorry at all.
